Our Lord now turns to a metaphor, it was a familiar one. The lesson it seems to carry is this: our Lord will not meddle with the old form of things, He will not patch up the old tenement in order that the new spirit may make shift to dwell in it. Change with Him is never mechanical, always organic; it comes, not by alteration in construction, but always purely of growth. He is propagating spiritual truth in the souls of men; the time is not yet ripe for rites and ordinances and hours of worship. But the days would come when the truth would need a garb—it would have to struggle amongst human institutions, and it must then have outer expression just as other institutions have. This expression men must give, and Christ was careful that, when the time came for this to be done, the right men should be in their place to do it. He takes a second metaphor to set forth the second part of His work: He will have new flasks for the new wine. This new doctrine was not committed either to the disciples of John or even to scribes enlightened about the kingdom of heaven, but to those who, having no preconceptions, received it as children do their parents’ words. This new wine would go on working and would want room to expand. Peter we know expanded with it; but men whose minds had stiffened into shape under existing systems were like old flasks of skin, so harsh and dry that they would sooner crack than stretch; they were neither plastic nor elastic, and our Lord wanted vessels that should be both the one and the other. These new flasks were now soon to be chosen; and when this was done the work would enter on a new phase. Up to the time of the call of the Apostles, our Lord’s most conspicuous concern is for the multitudes. After that call, the Apostles occupy the foreground, and the whole manner of teaching is rather suddenly changed. It is no longer adapted to a congregation of peasants; parables take the place of plain speech, and instead of everything being done _for_ the learner as before, much is left to be done _by_ him for himself. We mark another change also in the manner. Hitherto there has been no _haste_, all has proceeded in the most leisurely way; but soon danger will begin to threaten and time to press, and act to follow act in close succession. Following the subject of my book, I have been careful to mark how our Lord from the very first had an eye for characters of the sort He wanted and how He shaped them, with an unseen hand; but I must not have it supposed, because we see little lasting outcome from the preaching to the multitude, that therefore it was unimportant compared with the training of the Apostles. We must not suppose that Christ taught and healed chiefly that the Apostles might listen and learn.